Chapters 3 and 4 provided an overview of how I evaluated the extent of democracy in each province. This appendix offers details about that process as well as additional findings – information about ...media ownership, number of NGOs, and percentage of the vote that winners received in electoral races. The eight guarantees are in the order in which they appear in Chapter 4.ALTERNATIVE SOURCES OF INFORMATIONMy first task in evaluating alternative sources of information was to identify major outlets of local political and economic news in each province. I began by reviewing media registries, purchasing periodicals at kiosks, reading television guides, watching television, and listening to the radio. From this, I compiled a list of the main state and independent newspapers and broadcasting companies in each region. My list, in Table D.1, includes all the “serious” media outlets. Among print media alone, there are 557 outlets registered in Samara and 135 outlets registered in Ul'ianovsk. But few of these provide political or economic news, and most are tabloids. Moreover, the number of media outlets does not reflect the degree to which the right to provide alternative information can be exercised. A publication or broadcast is of little use to democracy if it only repeats the government line.With few exceptions, these media outlets are provincial institutions – not city, county, or national organizations.
Chapter 2 considers the influence of interests, resources, and organizational capacity relative to economic autonomy. This appendix considers four other alternative explanations – political ...opportunity structures, institutions, leadership, and international promotion of democracy. Unlike economic autonomy, none account for the greater degree of self-censorship and government harassment in Ul'ianovsk and Naryn.POLITICAL OPPORTUNITY STRUCTURESScholars have argued that political changes, such as increased access to government institutions and new alliances with government officials, can encourage people to become politically involved. Clearly, by harassing activists, local authorities are not sending the message that they want citizens to be involved in politics. Yet, harassment cannot explain self-censorship in Ul'ianovsk and Naryn. As Chapter 4 enumerates, government punishments in Ul'ianovsk are more common than they are in Naryn, yet self-censorship is greater in Naryn. Moreover, government harassment cannot account for the fact that a few individuals in Naryn nonetheless do challenge local authorities.INSTITUTIONSInstitutions are often cited as possible influences on democratic development in the former Soviet Union. Institutional theories hypothesize that reformers can design laws regulating elections, legislatures, and other components of democracy in order to enhance the long-term success of this form of government. However, laws regulating activism are too similar in the provinces of each country to account for the differences in officials' and activists' behaviors.
A Survey of Democracy in Russia's Regions McMann, Kelly M.; Petrov, Nikolai V.
Post-Soviet geography and economics,
04/2000, Letnik:
41, Številka:
3
Journal Article
An American political scientist and a Russian geographer, specialists in postCommunist political reform and Russian regional politics, respectively, adopt a subnational approach to democratization, ...measuring democracy in a standard fashion across 57 regions of Russia. They rate levels of democracy in Russia's oblasts, krays, and federal cities based on the results of a survey they administered to experts on Russian provincial politics. The article presents the ranking of the regions, evaluates the survey as a means of measuring provincial democracy, and examines five possible explanations for subnational variation in democracy. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: H11, H77, P16, P26. 3 figures, 4 tables, 79 references, 2 appendices.
Why does democracy develop unevenly within countries undergoing political reform? Democratization theories imply that the national government uniformly builds democracy throughout the country, but in ...neither federal nor unitary systems does the national government direct reform in the provinces. Instead, democracy develops in those regions where citizens have multiple opportunities for earning income. When citizens cannot easily find employment outside the state's purview or outside their province, local officials can effectively sanction behavior that challenges government authority. In regions with little economic opportunity, threats of job loss, firings, and repeated state inspections of private businesses effectively discourage citizens from engaging in the civic activity that undergirds democracy. Economic and political reforms are not merely compatible, as recent scholarship suggests, but democratization actually requires prior, or at least concurrent, market reform. Local democracy is important in transition countries because it enables people to solve problems no longer resolved by the state. Democratization of authoritarian and post-totalitarian regimes reduces the state's role in society, contributing to a decline in government services and causing citizens to grow averse to democracy. However, democratization at subnational levels allows nongovernmental groups to form and provide services once offered by the state. By mitigating some of the negative effects of democratization, private service provision encourages citizens to tolerate additional political reforms. In the long-term citizens may even embrace democracy, as these new service-providers solve problems more effectively than the state once did. These conclusions were reached by conducting two surveys, 252 in-depth interviews, and observational studies in Russia and Kyrgyzstan. The focus of the fieldwork was on the Russian provinces Samara and Ul'ianovsk and the Kyrgyzstani provinces Osh and Naryn. Studying subnational democracy in the different cultural, economic, and institutional settings of Russia and Kyrgyzstan increased the generalizability of the findings.
List of Interviews McMann, Kelly M
Economic Autonomy and Democracy,
05/2006
Book Chapter
Table C.1 provides a list of the interviews I conducted. In addition to the groups noted in the table, I spoke with businesspeople and average citizens. I interviewed businesspeople who were ...activists, and they are included in the appropriate categories in the table. I also had informal conversations with other businesspeople who were not activists but whom I met while I lived in each region. Similarly, I spoke with average citizens, such as members of the families with whom I lived and their neighbors and friends. I did not enumerate these conversations with businesspeople or average citizens.
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